Trial points to need for new policies

With the culmination of the Deutsche Bank trial last week, in which all three defendants were found “not guilty,” there is a movement to reopen the case so that a tragedy such as the one that, in 2007, took the lives of NYC firefighters Joseph Graffagnino Jr. and Robert Beddia, will never happen again.

Last summer the New York State legislature passed a bill, sponsored by Sen. Daniel Squadron and supported by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, that established a task force to address the problems that may have led to the incident. When the fire broke out, firefighters did not have architectural plans for the building and essentially went into the blaze blindfolded. Once inside, they confronted a nightmarish labyrinth of sealed plywood hatches and thick plastic sheeting.

In Squadron’s own words, “In any privately-owned or city-owned building, firefighters and first responders can be sure that if the rules were followed, everything will be consistent. In state-and public-authority owned buildings, they can’t be sure of that.”

In the last week two separate groups have issued statements asking for the entire case to be re-opened. Both groups cite former District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s acknowledgement that a consultant hired by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, who owned the building, warned the agency that the building was an accident waiting to happen. Furthermore, Morgenthau cited seven fires that occurred in the building from the time demolition began up to the fatal fire on August 18, 2007. The L.M.D.C. failed to report any of the fires to the appropriate agencies outlined in their own Emergency Action Plan.

Whether or not this information and the re-opening of the case would lead to a conviction is not the point. Indeed, the conviction of any defendant, whether it is a single person or an entire agency, will not undo the tragedy that befell Graffagnino and Beddia on that day.

The ultimate goal is to make sure such a tragedy never happens again. That is the charge of the task force established last summer. There is plenty of work to do, as there were serious missteps in this case by a number of key players, including the fire department, the department of buildings, and the L.M.D.C.

March 2012 is the deadline for the task force to submit its findings and recommendations in Albany.We hope they do their due diligence and come up with a policy that will keep all NYC firefighters and first responders safe. Perhaps that means an intense vetting of all contractors charged with the demolition of city buildings. Or perhaps it means simply making every building in the city, regardless of who owns it, subject to the city’s fire code.

But amidst the rapid development currently taking place in Lower Manhattan, we hope the task force presents its recommendations early, before the deadline. The next legislative session begins in January and we believe this to be an item that should be placed at the top of the agenda.

Governor Cuomo is in the unique position of having served as the State’s Attorney General when the tragedy happened and is more than familiar with the case. We strongly encourage him to come to the fore on this issue and use his weight and wisdom to fast track the outcome.

One Response to Trial points to need for new policies

Yes, there are big problems.When the US Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, met with Chinese President Hu Jintao, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on the 1st August 2007, there were pealnt-critical macroeconomic issues at stake. It was not a meeting of minds. It was a meeting of balls. Some of the world’s largest hack attempts are operations by the Chinese government against the United States. The Chinese are better at computers than America. And China is better at money than America. China has real money. America has paper illusions of money.Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are closing down bankrupt investment funds or trying to prop them up. The Federal Reserve Board props up all the worst speculators in the name of saving the American financial system, in a way that it would never prop up the failing American health system. American money paper is stacked up like a house of cards. The house of cards, Enron-style, Arthur Andersen-style, is dependent upon the safety of underlying assets which are themselves jerry-built on ball bearings. The accountants and risk managers know this, but they look the other way to save their paycheques.The American banks’ derivatives books are like mountain climbers tethered together on the side of a dangerous mountain in a blizzard. One goes, they all go. And the mountain itself is fantasy collateral, expediently raised by creative accounting.America owns nothing. China owns America. That, thanks to the Bush-Cheney junta, is the realpolitik of the 21st century, post-911. Or, at least, that seems to be the buzz, uttered sotto voce, around the strangely quiet coffee shops of Wall Street at the moment.The problem is, China knows all this. And America knows that China knows. So the NESARA move to a benevolent global banking system is a problem for America. America does not want a benevolent global banking system. America wants an American global banking system. China is using NESARA to discipline America.